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Welcome to the FunDivEurope Knowledge Transfer Platform

The platform supports communication and knowledge exchange among stakeholders, scientists, policy makers and the public regarding the understanding about the functional significance of biodiversity for the provision of forest ecosystem services in major European forest types. The aim is to understand and quantify how tree species diversity can be used to foster the provision of ecosystem services such as timber production, carbon sequestration and freshwater provisioning.

Featured Knowledge Elements

Biodiversity research of the last 15 years could demonstrate that multiple functions and services of an ecosystem are influenced by the number of species within this system. Most of these findings, however, are based on research within grassland systems. So science has to make the next big step and address those ecosystems that control a good portion of the carbon, nutrient and water balances of the earth: the forests.
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FunDivEUROPE utilized the data from the European sites of the global network of tree diversity experiments. Over the past decade diversity experiments of up to 8 tree species had been established and provide the unique opportunity to reveal causal relationships between tree species diversity and ecosystem functions. The experimental sites were complemented by a newly established network of more than 250 research plots in a variety of European forest types clustered in six regions across Europe from boreal to mediterranean conditions.
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Most viewed Knowledge Elements

During the last glaciations a higher percentage of temperate trees died out in Europe as compared to North America. As a consequence the species richness nowadays is also much lower in Europe. In our publication “Functional Resilience against Climate-Driven Extinctions – Comparing the Functional Diversity of European and North American Tree Floras” (PLoS ONE, 2016, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148607) we asked whether the more severe climate-driven extinctions of tree species in Europe as compared to North America have also led to a systematic reduction of functional diversity among European...

Timber quality describes all the wood characteristics and properties that affect the value recovery chain and the service-ability of end products. In the context of timber production the quality of timber is a major driver for the price of the final product and the income of forest owners. The higher the quality of timber, the easier it is to achieve a ‘good’ price. For construction purposes the attributes dimension, stiffness and strength or dimension stability are most important. Wood properties determinate the quality of timber as well. Here the number and size of knots, the grain angle...

Current theory on transmission rates of plant pathogens predicts a strong influence of host diversity on the degree of infection. We tested this prediction for foliar fungal pathogens on forest tree species, making use of the BIOTREE tree diversity experiment in Germany. We hypothesized that fungal species diversity was positively and fungal pathogen load negatively related to tree species diversity. We conducted analyses at three hierarchical levels, at the plot level, the level of single tree species, and the level of individual fungus species. We found strong tree species identity...

Earthworms play a major role in the conversion of organic matter into humus, thus improving soil fertility in many soils. In addition to dead organic matter, the earthworm also ingests any other small soil particles which make minerals and plant nutrients accessible for plants to use. The earthworm's burrowing creates a multitude of channels through the soil and is of great value in maintaining the soil structure, enabling processes of aeration and drainage. Therefore earthworms are ecosystems engineers which have an important role for forest ecosystems.
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